Genesis Framework - Your thoughts?

[Jeffro]

Great conversation here and I'm sure Justin Tadlock has to feel pretty good seeing all of the great comments regarding Hybrid and it's code. Brad Williams and WebDevStudios uses Genesis for most of their clients sites now and I'll see if I can get him to chime in on this discussion regarding their experience with it.

As for frameworks. My head is pretty much muddied to the point where I can't decide over one or the other. That's for all you developer types to discuss.

Sooner rather than later, I'll be writing a review of Headway which from what I've heard so far, has a refreshing take on things.

[Brad]

I really admire what Justin and Ian have produced and have experimented with both. I prefer Hybrid over Thematic but that might be a personal preference as both are great products.

The question though was about Genesis. I've been using it since beta and absolutely love it. It's totally changed the way that I and people I contract with do business.

1. Incredible support
2. SEO goodness, no need for a plugin and the upcoming SEO features in 1.3 are well thought out and based on expert SEO advice.
3. The framework has been run through a security audit by Mark Jaquith
4. Clean code, flexible structure
5. Built-in multiple layouts
6. Automatic updates
7. Well thought out theme settings
8. Lots of hooks
9. A couple of great plugins - Simple Sidebar and Simple Hooks plugins
10. Many Child Themes to choose from and easy to create your own
11. Great selection of built-in widgets (I love the featured post widget)

I feel confident using and recommending Genesis

Disclaimer :-) Brian Gardner has been very gracious to accept and sell a couple of basic business child themes I designed for Genesis.

[guitahplayah]

What do people think about Headway?

Doug

[williamsba]

We love using Genesis at WDS. In fact coding for Genesis is very similar to coding for Thesis, it's just a matter of understanding the hooks available. One of my guys setup this visual hook reference that is extremely useful when developing new Genesis child themes:
http://genesistutorials.com/visual-hook-guide/

Some of the many reasons we love Genesis:

• Easy to create child themes
• Security review from Mark Jaquith
• They listen to feedback and incorporate those ideas
• Strong SEO features built-in
• Automatic updates
• Not too many features

One of my biggest complaints with theme frameworks is they try to include too many features in the theme. Thesis is the biggest culprit of this. I like having SEO features built into the theme, but beyond that I want plugins to handle the rest. I don't like getting "walled" into a theme because of all the options you become dependent on.

[nathanrice]

Paul Cunningham said:

Genesis framework looks interesting and is reportedly a strong platform. Anyone got any experience with it?

If you decide to give Genesis a try, feel free to give me a shout if you need help getting started. I'm more than happy to help.

Ryan said:

That's not so much an insult to Genesis, more a compliment to Hybrid which is far and away the best framework out there IMO. Genesis may catch up with Hybrid in time, but it's not there yet IMO.

Aside from the inline documentation (which I have, admittedly, neglected in some areas of the source), what makes Hybrid more mature than Genesis? That's not a challenge ... I'm genuinely interested in making the software better, all the time.

Ian Stewart said:

For commercial theme framework alternatives to Thesis, I pretty much always recommend Genesis. Hands down. It's awesome.

It's completely awesome that you would say that. I sincerely appreciate your support!

Ryan Said:

Do any of you know what Thesis does which the other big three frameworks can't?

I think the biggest draw Thesis has is its unique balance of "hardcore framework" and "noobie design controls". No one else strikes this balance as well as Thesis does. Also, Chris Pearson's typographic formula is unbeatable. Personally, this is Thesis' biggest strength.

DannyGSmith said:

How flexible is hybrid? I really like genesis, but there are times, that I beat my head against the wall, i.e. trying to not use primary sidebar for everything, when you have over 100 widgets.

Unless Hybrid allows you to modify core template files, I would doubt it's going to help in that department. Then, of course, there is the problem of updates.

dgwyer said:

There has been quite a bit of buzz around the new Startbox framework. Has anyone been beta testing this and have any preliminary reviews?

I haven't used it, but looking at the features, it seems like it's not yet on the level of established frameworks (Genesis, Hybrid, Thesis). And the features that it does have seem to be features that have existed in Genesis since February.

andreasnrb said:

Ain't themeframeworks as parent themes kind of bloaty?

No, not at all. In fact, the difference in page generation time with a framework and a theme like TwentyTen is barely worth mentioning. We're talking milliseconds. Of course, it all depends on the framework. I've benchmarked frameworks internally, and some are very good, but some are very bad.

jb510 said:

So for Thesis this accomplished by the hooks and custom_functions.php file. For Genesis that looks like it would be the functions.php file in the Child Theme [...] Having only worked heavily with thesis I'm honestly not entirely clear how Genesis and Hybrid handle it.

In Genesis, there are 2 valid ways of making modifications.

1. Put all your mods in the child theme's functions.php file. Make sure to use conditionals properly, though.
2. Forget conditionals in functions.php, just create the file that corresponds to where you want your mod to execute. For instance, if you wanted to display excerpts on all category archives, create a file called archive.php and put the following code in that file:

 <?php
// Force the excerpt
remove_action('genesis_post_content', 'genesis_do_post_content');
add_action('genesis_post_content', 'the_excerpt');
 
require_once(PARENT_DIR . '/index.php');  

And from Genesis 1.3 on, you can replace the require_once() call with just genesis();

And because this is the category.php file, this mod will only apply to category archives. This is my method of choice. If WordPress is going to do the conditional logic anyway, you might as well just piggyback on that, right?

[PaulCunningham]

If you decide to give Genesis a try, feel free to give me a shout if you need help getting started. I'm more than happy to help.

I've got Genesis + News child theme running on http://exchangeserverpro.com now. So far so good, the widgetized home page is certainly good though I now feel that I need to dress it up a little because the blog content is so text-focussed so there isn't a lot of cool post images being thumbnailed on the home page.

Struggled a little with the topnav.php modification to use a WP 3.0 custom menu there, will dig more into the StudioPress support forums for the answer later this week or raise a thread of my own.

I like the ease with which the multiple page layouts can be configured, going to make it easier to do landing pages and such.

About to start digging into the hooks to start customizing a few more things. I've made a few minor styles changes but I'm not sure that directly editing the CSS file is the best way to do that, if an upgraded child theme was released I'd lose those changes right? Answer is probably in the doco somewhere...

Overall I'm happy with it.

[Ryan]

Thanks for chiming in Nathan.

Aside from the inline documentation (which I have, admittedly, neglected in some areas of the source), what makes Hybrid more mature than Genesis? That's not a challenge ... I'm genuinely interested in making the software better, all the time.

It's the little things. Justin is quite anal about pretty much everything so it's all the little finer points (too many to document here) which he's worked out in great detail. Most of those things won't mean jack to the average user who is doing nothing more than creating a child theme with new CSS and maybe a new template file. The main difference is just the documentation though. I've read through the source files for both Hybrid and Genesis a few times now as I like to keep abreast of what's going on in the framework world in case I need to start creating child themes for them at some point, so having good inline documentation really makes understanding what's going on under the hood a lot easier. It's not just adding phpDoc comments either, there needs to be line by line documentation too sometimes. Hybrid also follows the WP coding guidelines whereas Genesis does not. That doesn't make any real difference per se, except that it seems sensible to use the same coding style as the core software you are plugging into (albeit half the time WordPress core devs ignore their own guidelines).


For the record, I probably recommend Genesis more often than Hybrid. Most of the people asking me for theme advice are noobish and aren't actually looking for a framework, they're looking for a kick butt theme to use, modify and make work the way they want. For most people this is Genesis as they'll install Genesis, then a child theme and then proceed to hack the bajeesus out of the child theme. Hybrid is something I recommend for hard core developers who are unlikely to bother making use of an existing child theme anyway. Genesis has seriously good child themes, nothing even comes close on that front in the theme framework world.

[Brad]

I'm happy to lend a hand with the top nav if you need help. I added one to the top of my upcoming Newsbreak theme which you can view at http://www.themecraft.com/demo/newsbreak

Just need to widgetize that area via a hook in your child's function file then add a WordPress menu widget. You will need to style it in your child's css file as well.

You can also use a custom menu in the primary and secondary nav positions if you choose to.

Struggled a little with the topnav.php modification to use a WP 3.0 custom menu there, will dig more into the StudioPress support forums for the answer later this week or raise a thread of my own.


Overall I'm happy with it.

[guitahplayah]

I have experience with Genesis and with the addition of Simple Hooks, it is a much simpler process to organize the php to suit your needs. The platinum theme is terrific. Matt just got me Headway (before Thesis went split-GPL). The language is different; but, skins are like child themes, it seems. Headway seems more visually-friendly/cut and paste. I think StudioPress has wonderful support. Haven't yet had to use Headway's support. So, my vote would be for Genesis with a nod toward Headway's design structure of skins, leafs, and visual editor.

Doug, Mansfield, MA

[sideradesign]

I've used Genesis on a few client projects, and it's a great commercial framework.
I think the devs took some inspiration from Hybrid, that's why they are similar to code for.

Hybrid is my favorite framework for creating my themes.